With the development of computer communication technologies, internet technologies and multimedia technologies, watching online videos is being applied more and more widely. A user can select any time slot to, by establishing a network connection with a video playing server through a client, watch various types of videos provided by the video playing server, for example, movies, TV series or Flash videos. He can select his preferred video play file, click it, download it on line, play it, and watch it, so as to enjoy various video extension services provided by a digital multimedia operator through the video playing server.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating a flowchart of an online video playing method in the traditional art. With reference to FIG. 1, the flow includes the following process.
At block 101, the video playing server stores various kinds of videos in advance.
In this block, the video playing server provides video play files such as movies, TV series, Flash videos and so on. For example, each movie or each episode of a TV series is stored as a video play file.
At block 102, the video playing server establishes a network connection with the client.
In this block, if the user needs to watch an online video, he can establish a network connection with the video playing server through the client so as to obtain a video play file he wants to watch.
At block 103, a video downloading request from the user is received, and a video play file corresponding to the video downloading request is returned to the user and is played by a video player on the client.
In this block, the video playing server receives the video downloading request from the user, allocates bandwidth transmission resources for the user, and returns the video play file corresponding to the video downloading request to the client via the allocated bandwidth transmission resources. The allocated bandwidth transmission resources can guarantee that a transmission rate of the corresponding video play file is larger than a playing rate of the video play file. After the client receives the returned playable video play file, plays it. In this way, by way of playing while downloading, waiting time of the user is efficiently saved.
It can be seen from the above that, in the traditional online video playing method, after the network connection is established with the video playing server, the user can download a video play file that he wants to watch and play it online. In this process, the user always occupies the bandwidth resources provided by the video playing server. If a lot of users centrally download a certain hot video and play it at the same time, this will cause the time of downloading the video is relatively centralized so that the pressure of the bandwidth resources of the video playing server is relatively heavy; meanwhile, under the condition that the bandwidth resources of the video playing server are limited, other users need to wait to access the video playing server to perform their downloading until playing of the video play file of the user who occupies the bandwidth resources is finished and the connection to the video playing server is exited to release the occupied bandwidth resources. However, during the period from finishing downloading the video play file to finishing playing the video play file, the bandwidth resources of the user are always in an idle status, which makes the resource utilization rate being relative low and the number of accessing users being relatively small; further, a user may need not watch a whole video play file, however, in the conventional art, he needs to download the whole video play file, which causes unnecessary network flow overhead, and causes the costs of the user watching online video to be relatively high.